No 7-Eleven!

The unrest in Turkey all began with a protest against a shopping mall. NO 7-Eleven: Resisting Chains and Corporate Control shares a lot with Istanbul’s Right to the City and its call for community self-determination. Our goal is a zoning amendment to require that all chain stores and banks get approval from the local community board. We don’t believe we need to turn the entire nation upside down to succeed but NO 7-Eleven needs your help with contacts!

We want to hold a big event — a picket-rally in front of the doubledecker super store 7-Eleven on 5th Avenue @ 23rd Street opposite the Flat Iron Building. But we can’t draw a big crowd without city-wide attention and excitement. Our list of contacts alone can’t draw those numbers or create that excitement. So NO 7-Eleven needs to expand!

We need to find support from many organizations and activists to help us create that excitement. Do you have any organizational contacts? Speak to them. Do you know any organizations or activists that you think would be interested? Send those suggestions to us.

7-Eleven Corp has delayed its 11th & A store opening from May 15 to November 15, there’s still no franchisee, their grocery-beer license application expired last month and the contractor no longer says he’s constructing a 7-Eleven — it’s just a generic box, he says. We won’t know for sure that we’ve won until 7-Eleven takes the site off its website as an available store, but it looks good for us. No doubt the corporation wants to keep a neighborhood-friendly image and doesn’t want any bad press.

IF WE CAN WIN ON AVENUE A, WE CAN GO ALL THE WAY

Our goal is basic community self-determination: let the local community choose where chain stores are welcome and how many. It’s an opportunity to push back against the giant corporations and to control their access — tell them where to go, instead of them telling us. Here’s a great article from Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor Secretary about the economic and political importance of restricting giant corporate access. NO711’s community self-determination effort is a bottom-up means towards restricting corporate access.

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